Controversial scientist predicts planetary wipeout
Controversial scientist James Lovelock
Billions of people could be wiped out over the next century because of climate change, a leading expert said.
Professor James Lovelock, who pioneered the idea of the Earth as a living organism, said as the planet heats up humans will find it increasingly hard to survive.
He warned that as conditions worsen, the global population which is currently around 6.5 billion, may sink as low as 500 million. Prof Lovelock also claims that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time.
Given the dire situation we face, he urged people to drop the phrase "global warming," which has cosy connotations, and instead start to think of it as "global heating." Prof Lovelock, is an independent scientist who first proposed the Gaia Theory, which argues that the Earth, like a body, is a complex and intricately balanced system which all works together to allow life to continue as we know it.
However he fears that as carbon dioxide emissions from man and the planet itself soar, the Earth will heat up causing water shortages, destroying life in much of the planet's oceans and making it impossible for plants to grow. Prof Lovelock, who last night gave the 5th John Collier Lecture to the Institution of Chemical Engineers in London, said: "There is very good evidence of what happened 55 million years ago when as much carbon dioxide was put into the atmosphere by geology as is being done by us now. "Temperatures zoomed up by 8 degrees and stayed there for 200,000 years then came back to normal."
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